Behaviour of composite walls under monotonic and cyclic shear loading

The novel form of composite walling system consists of two skins of profiled steel sheeting with an in-fill of concrete. Such walling system can be used as shear elements in steel framed building subjected to lateral load. This paper presents the results of small-scale model tests on composite wall and its components manufactured from very thin sheeting and micro-concrete tested under monotonic and cyclic shear loading conditions. The heavily instrumented small-scale tests provided information on the load-deformation response, strength, stiffness, strain condition, sheet-concrete interaction and failure modes. Analytical models for shear strength and stiffness are derived with some modification factor to take into account the effect of quasi-static cycling loading. The performance of design equations is validated through experimental results.